“He is no fool…”

Yesterday [January 8] marked the 53rd anniversary of the deaths of Jim Eliot, Nate Saint, Ed McCully, Roger Youderian and Pete Fleming, missionaries killed by the Waodani (or Huaorani) Indians on a sandbar in the jungle of Ecuador.

Eliot’s journals were filled with unique and inspiring words that demonstrated his clear and unswerving hope in the gospel, a hope that permeated his life and motivated to consider all things loss for the sake of knowing Jesus. Here are some of his most famous quotes:

“He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain that which he cannot lose.”

“Father, make me a crisis man. Bring those I contact to decision. Let me not be a milepost on a single road; make me a fork, that men must turn one way or another on facing Christ in me.”

“I may no longer depend on pleasant impulses to bring me before the Lord. I must rather respond to principles I know to be right, whether I feel them to be enjoyable or not. ”

“Most laws condemn the soul and pronounce sentence. The result of the law of my God is perfect. It condemns but forgives. It restores – more than abundantly – what it takes away.”

“Wherever you are – be all there.”

“Those whimpering Stateside young people will wake up on the Day of Judgment condemned to worse fates than these demon-fearing Indians, because, having a Bible, they were bored with it – while these never heard of such a thing as writing.”